Wind throw, as evidenced by a tree bole with an attached root plate, is an indicator of forest disturbance, and can often be used as direct evidence of surface winds during a single storm event. We assess tree-fall patterns resulting from the 1982 Cyclone Bernie event in the North Island, New Zealand, and apply these findings to interpretation of a pre--Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) tree-fall site to determine if the subfossil tree-fall pattern could have been caused by a single extropical cyclone. There is insufficient evidence to recommend that a single extropical storm event could have caused the forest destruction observed at our pre-LGM tree-fall site, and therefore multiple possibilities for enhanced wind flow that could have caused tree throw are possible.